Women and the Katiba Macina in Central Mali
This policy brief examines the local rule of the Katiba Macina from a gender perspective and addresses the question of women’s participation in the insurgency. The key findings can be summarised as follows. First,controlling gender relations is an important element of the Katiba Macina’s rule, allowing the insurgency to demonstrate its authority over the community. Second, its rule has also had a gendered impact, which has restricted livelihoods in ways that threaten not only women’s socio-economic security, but also their way of life and identity. Third, women, like in most other jihadist insurgencies, are not recruited as combatants, but have multi-faceted supporting roles as wives of ‘men of the bush’ and as informants in informal surveillance mechanisms that pass on information and contribute to maintaining law and order. Moreover, women are more likely to actively participate when they are bonded to the insurgency through familial ties.
Kinas eksportsuksess: Urettferdig praksis eller rettferdig konkurranse?
Skuldingane haglar under handelskrigen mellom USA og Kina. På dette seminaret vil professor Rolf J. Langhammer gå gjennom fakta den kinesiske handelspolitikken.
Kvifor populisme?
Kven er dei nye populistane? Og er dei eigentleg populistiske?
Den politiske situasjonen i Etiopia og ringverknader for Afrikas Horn
Korleis er den politiske dynamikken i Etiopia, og kva implikasjonar kan han ha for Afrikas Horn?
Liberale verdifellesskap og selvbilder i praksis: Hvordan Norge gikk til krig og hva vi kan lære
Hvilke lærdommer kan vi trekke av bombingen av Libya i 2011? Var krigføringen i tråd med krigens folkerett? Brøt norske myndigheter grunnloven i forbindelse med krigsdeltagelsen? Levde media opp til sitt samfunnsoppdrag så lenge krigføringen i Libya pågikk? Ble det norske folk holdt for narr om de egentlige årsakene til krigen? Og hva ble konsekvensene av Libya-krigen for nasjonen Libya, regionen og verdenssamfunnet? Libya: Krigens uutholdelige letthet setter et kritisk søkelys på Norges deltagelse i den Nato-ledete operasjonen i Libya. Blant forfatterne finner vi folkerettsjurister, historikere, militære, statsvitere og professorer i journalistikk og fredsforskning. Et felles utgangspunkt for alle bidragsyterne er spørsmålet om hva norske politikere, militære og det norske folk kan og bør lære av Norges første krig i Afrika.
The double proximity paradox in peacebuilding: implementation and perception of the EU rule of law mission in Kosovo
This contribution increases the understanding of the EU's role in post-conflict settings by exploring perceptions of EULEX by local rule of law experts. Drawing on critical peacebuilding and the decline of normative power Europe literatures, we develop an analytical framework, underlining the importance of the intention–implementation gap and the implementation–perception gap in understanding how EU missions are perceived. By comparing local expert narratives to those of EULEX judges, prosecutors, and legal officers, we contend that the core problem for the negative perception of the mission results from what we call the double proximity paradox in peacebuilding. The first paradox is one of implementation and transpires when an actor commits substantial resources to address structural problems in a post-conflict territory due to its centrality for its own interests, but fails to uphold its commitment as its immediate interests can only be achieved through agents who contribute to these problems. The second paradox relates to perception and transpires as high commitments raise expectations of structural impact. The visibility of the actor's investment makes any implementation failures more tangible. The actor is therefore, paradoxically, the most open to criticism in a territory where it is doing the most.
Elite Survival and the Arab Spring: The Cases of Tunisia and Egypt
The article compares the survival of old regime elites in Tunisia and Egypt after the 2011 uprisings and analyses its enabling factors. Although democracy progressed in Tunisia and collapsed in Egypt, the countries show similarities in the old elite’s ability to survive the Arab Spring. In both cases, the popular uprisings resulted in the type of elite circulation that John Higley and György Lengyel refer to as ‘quasi-replacement circulation’, which is sudden and coerced, but narrow and shallow. To account for this converging outcome, the chapter foregrounds the instability, economic decline and information uncertainty in the countries post-uprising and the navigating resources, which the old elites possessed. The roots of the quasi-replacement circulation are traced to the old elites’ privileged access to money, network, the media and, for Egypt, external support. Only parts of the structures of authority in a political regime are formal. The findings show the importance of evaluating regime change in a broader view than the formal institutional set-up. In Tunisia and Egypt, the informal structures of the anciens régimes survived – so did the old regime elites.